The present invention relates to a crimp connector wherein a crimp contact is inserted forwards into a contact slot from the backside thereof.
FIG. 1 is a sectional view of a conventional crimp connector disclosed in Japanese Utility Model Provisional Publication No. 29748/95. The connector has such a structure that an electric wire is first crimp-connected onto a crimp contact 3 inserted in a connector housing 1 and then the crimp contact is set in an outer housing 4. In this conventional crimp connector, in order to join the crimp contact 3 on to the connector housing 1 without being drawn out, adopted is such a means that a flexible lance 5 is disposed on a wall defining a contact slot 2 and the crimp contact 3 is fixed in order not to be drawn out backward by means of linking the lance 5 to a recess 6 of the crimp contact 3 making use of deflectional deformation of the lance.
However, in the case of joining the crimp contact 3 without being drawn out with the flexible lance 5, due to the necessity of a deflection space/clearance space for the lance 5, an unfavorable clearance is liable to occur and a large clearance may make the crimp contact 3 movable back and forth resulting in degradation of contact reliability of a contact portion connected with a coupling connector. Further, as shown in FIG. 2, when an electric wire is crimped with a crimp punch 7, because of misalignment between a channel portion 8 of the crimp punch 7 and a crimp blade 9 of the crimp contact 3, the crimp punch 7 is likely to interfere unsuitably with the crimp blade 9 resulting in a crimp failure.